Trump spoke after the dramatic election night:

08.20 Wednesday morning Norwegian time, Donald Trump took the podium at the White House, after a long and dramatic election night in the United States. The president’s family was behind him as he spoke.

He began by thanking the American people and his family.

– We were ready to celebrate, but then everything was canceled. We have received millions of votes today, but a very sad group of people is trying to destroy for us, Trump said.

In addition, he listed several victories, also in states that are not yet close to being decided.

– We won Florida very overweight, it was not expected. We won Ohio, Texas and Georgia. They can’t catch us again. We won North Carolina, they cannot reach us there. Most likely, we win Pennsylvania. We are going to win Michigan. We won Wisconsin. We don’t even need all the states that we are winning now. No one has seen anything like this before.

He further said that he did not want more vote counting:

– We will go to the Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find ballots at 4 a.m. and add them to the list, says Trump.

– This is a scam against the American people, a disgrace to our country.

– From what I can see, we won.

Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator and prominent Trump supporter, was not happy with what he heard from the president.

“I was very depressed from what I heard the president say,” Santorum told CNN.

Fox News profile Chris Wallace also criticized Trump after the speech.

“This is an extremely flammable situation and the president has just thrown a match on the fire,” he told the New York Times.

Biden: – Road to victory

Just before 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Democratic candidate Joe Biden of Wilmington, Delaware, where Biden has been counting the votes with his family.

– It feels good where we are now. We believe we are on the right track to win this election, Biden said at the time.

At that time, about half of the votes were counted. For the moment, Democrats have a small advantage, as opinion polls have predicted.

However, the result is far from the by-elections that many Democrats expected in advance. Nothing has been decided yet on the question of who will eventually remain as the next president of the United States.

As Biden spoke, Donald Trump quickly took to Twitter.

– We lead big, but they try to steal the elections. We will never let them do that. No one can vote after polling stations are closed, writes the president.

The message is flagged as misleading by Twitter.

NUPI boss: it is not Trump who decides

Ulf Sverdrup, researcher and director of NUPI, says that one must trust that the United States has good procedures for naming a winner after tonight’s presidential election.

– It is not Trump who decides this election, Sverdrup tells VG.

After the president of the United States declared himself the winner of the election on Wednesday morning in a White House speech, Sverdrup says Trump has made a surprisingly good decision, compared to previous opinion polls.

But Sverdrup emphasizes:

– The election has not been decided. And it is not Trump who decides this election.

– Many had said in advance that Trump would go to court, although it is fair to do so on the basis that the votes cast should not be counted. But now these processes must go their own way. We must be able to trust that the system is robust and will arrive at the correct result.

Sverdrup adds that the presidential election more than anything else was a referendum on Donald Trump:

– Trump has made a better decision than expected and Biden has made it worse than expected.

– It is very special that a president is declared the winner before the votes are counted. It does not bode well for confidence in the outcome of the elections. Now we just have to hope that the system that counts and that it will declare the winner is robust, says Paal Sigurd Hilde, a researcher at the Department of Defense Studies.

– Trump seems to have been very successful with his election campaign, but the election has not been decided, emphasizes Hilde.